Is This My Destiny?

MALLORY'S POV

I run down stairs at roughly 2pm, only I can manage to leave my laptop downstairs after an argument like that. I grab it off the sofa and slip away back up the stairs before either parent can hold me hostage. Currently, my desire to see those wankers is dwindling after they decided to set me up with some random rich prick who's a lot older than me! Well three years, but to a delicate flower such as myself that's a long time.

Who would guess that in this day and age arranged marriages would be popular in my dreary little town. So who am I marrying? Your guess is as good as mine. I don't recall ever having met this man in my life and now to protect my fathers assets I have to marry him. God forbid he loses his precious money he'd much rather sacrifice his only child instead. Parents are parents until you're legally an adult at sixteen, unfortunately at the grand old age of eighteen I will be married off and gone after being seen as a burden for the past two years and draining my fathers resources.

I heard my mother crying and yelling last night, I wonder if they were talking about me. But if that were true she wouldn't have been so supportive of him over lunch when the bomb was dropped. I know my parents didn't marry for love and I always thought that I would have a different life with more freedom than mum ever did. Allegedly not. I could run away but I have nowhere to go, everyone I know respects my parents and would force me home in the blink of an eye. I can't win against my father and I have no choice in my own marriage. I'm trapped in a reality that I never thought would be mine.

All I know about this 'fiancé' of mine is a name... Jasper Michaels. I know his family, I think I went to daycare with his little brother Luca, before my parents started to home school me and eventually hire me a tutor. I don't know what to do anymore, it's like I'm having a midlife crisis 30 years too early and all I want to do is have a toddler style tantrum. I don't have any control over one of the most influential decisions of my life.

Tomorrow I'm to meet him for the first time and in a weeks time on my eighteenth birthday I'll be a wife. I'll have a husband, one I won't have even known for long enough to build a friendship let alone a romantic relationship.

I log onto my laptop and open up my facebook account, it's a private account my parents don't know I have it and none of my friends on facebook are my friends in real life, I have no friends in real life. I was home schooled and took no part in out side of school activities for fear I'd meet the wrong people and hurt my fathers reputation. I open up the chat and start talking to one of the friends I've made through the internet. Her name is Mattie (short for Matilda) I've known her for two years now and she had a similar upbringing to me.

Mallory White

Hey, you awake?

Mattie Killinger

Yo, always here when you need me. What up?

Mallory White

They're making me marry a stranger it's an arranged marriage and inescapable. What do I do?

Mattie Killinger

WHAT!? They can't force you to say vows! You'll be fine!

Mallory White

I'll get disowned by my dad and kicked out if I don't marry him and I have nowhere I can go to without getting taken back and forced into it. I'm trapped and I don't want to get married I'm only 18.

Mattie Killinger

Maybe he'll be nice. He's in the same boat after all. Maybe you'll fall in love like the stories you read.

Mallory White

What if he isn't?

Mattie Killinger

You can run away from Mr Stranger

We talked for most of the afternoon, it hit 6pm and right on cue I was called down for dinner. I shut off my laptop and trudged downstairs with my not-a-happy-bunny face in full effect. When I reached the dining room my mother and father were sat side by side and a place was set for me opposite.

"Nice of you to join us tonight Mallory," my father greeted me sternly and I looked down at my plate. "Have you been considering our conversation from this morning?"

"Oh, so now I get a choice," I roll my eyes and start to eat.

"Not in the marriage no, but in the way you talk to your parents you have the one and only choice Mallory-Anne," my mother glares at me as she speaks. I've never known a mother with less compassion for a daughter.

"Why would I want to speak nicely to people who are selling me to a man and calling me his wife!?" I stand up and leave the room.

You would think that my parents would at least be sensitive about this particular topic but they've never been the kind of parents that everyone else seems to have. They've never been gentle or considerate, they've never shown me enough affection and I know that after speaking to Mattie. Her parents aren't perfect but even she agrees that they're a lot better than mine.

I lie down and close my eyes. I don't want to sleep for fear of meeting my future husband but I'm so tired after todays stress that I can hardly keep my eyes open.